


The Lark and Her Lieutenants

by iberiandoctor (Jehane), ThebanSacredBand



Category: Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Alternate Universe - Role Reversal, Canon Era, F/M, Feminist Ideology, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-05
Updated: 2020-06-04
Packaged: 2021-03-02 21:28:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 18,585
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24013609
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jehane/pseuds/iberiandoctor, https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThebanSacredBand/pseuds/ThebanSacredBand
Summary: While Cosette is stirring up the Revolution, Grantaire meets a young man in the Luxembourg Gardens.
Relationships: Cosette Fauchelevent & Jean Valjean, Cosette Fauchelevent/Marius Pontmercy, Enjolras/Grantaire (Les Misérables), Javert/Jean Valjean
Comments: 44
Kudos: 134
Collections: Les Mis Big Bang: Quarantine Edition





	1. The Lark's Battlefield

**Author's Note:**

> _Cosette was not very timid by nature. There flowed in her veins some of the blood of the bohemian and the adventuress who runs barefoot. It will be remembered that she was more of a lark than a dove. There was a foundation of wildness and bravery in her._
> 
> Gorgeous art from @sssara-b [here](https://iberiandoctor.dreamwidth.org/42027.html)!

Growing up in the Convent of the Bernardines of the Perpetual Adoration, Cosette was surrounded by many mother-figures, but she had no one mother. She felt the lack most keenly. All the nuns in the world, no matter how well-meaning and kindly, not even the Blessed Virgin Mother herself, are not as important as one mother in the formation of a young person’s being.

Cosette’s earliest memories were of an innkeeper woman in Montfermeil – emphatically not her mother – who had beaten her and starved her and made her fetch and carry at the inn from dusk till dawn. Those memories were filled with hunger and deprivation, but, strangely enough, not with fear. 

The neighbours in the village and the patrons of the inn would look at her with a mixture of apprehension and disgust. _"Where can that child be going? Is it a werewolf child?"_ they would say as they glimpsed her on the paths in the forest of Montfermeil. The more well-meaning ones called her the Lark, for she would rise every morning before any one else in the house or the village, and was always in the street or the fields before daybreak, but this was a sad, sullen little lark who never sang.

It had been from this existence of miserable drudgery that she had been liberated by the man she only knew as her father. She owed him everything. And yet, if he had not come to her rescue when he did, who was to say Cosette would not have eventually contrived to save herself?

Cosette loved her father with all her soul. As a little girl, she occasionally fancied that the soul of her mother had passed into that good man and had come to dwell near her. Once, when they had recently settled in the convent, she even rested her head on his knee and thought to herself, “Maybe this man is my mother!”

But such fancies do not hold for long, even for a girl growing up in a convent. 

While Cosette had been small, her father had been willing to talk to her of her mother. But when she became a young girl, it seemed to her that he no longer dared. She could not understand his intransigence or his determination to cover the name with darkness.

Growing up, her friends had told her that she was homely rather than pretty, and Cosette was well aware that the Prioress’s observation, upon taking her in as the Convent’s charity pupil, _“She will grow up ugly”_ , had come to fruition. She knew herself awkward, thin; timid and bold at once; a motherless girl who was a grown-up before her time.

In the convent she was taught religion and her Bible, also History, Geography, grammar, the participles, a good deal of music, a little less drawing, and diverse other lady-like arts favoured in convents across the country. She was not taught about the Sciences, as these were only beginning to come into fashion, and certainly not for girls. 

However, owing to the intervention of the dour Mlle. Corneille, an adherent of the political theorist Gertrude de Staël, who visited the convent and others across Paris for an hour each every week, Cosette also learned about the kings of France, and the Revolution of 1799, and Lafayette’s infamous _Déclaration des droits de l'homme et du citoyen de 1789_. 

She was also taught about the feminine version of this same document, the _Déclaration des droits de la femme et de la citoyenne_ on 5 September in 1791 by activist and playwright Olympe de Gouges. 

Mlle. Corneille said, “By publishing this document, de Gouges hoped to expose the failures of the French Revolution in the recognition of female worth, and for her courage and her principles, she was repaid by a journey to the arms of Mme. Guillotine. Such was the contempt for women in our otherwise civilised nation.”

The first article of the Declaration of the Rights of Man, as Cosette learned, proclaimed _"Men are born and remain free and equal in rights. Social distinctions may be based only on common utility."_ The first article of Declaration of the Rights of Woman and the Female Citizen made this response: _"Woman is born free and remains equal to man in rights.”_

This was a lesson which the young Cosette held to her heart.

In 1829, when her education was at an end, Cosette and her father left the convent and installed themselves in a house in the Rue Plumet. It was the transition from the convent’s solitude to the beginning of liberty; a restoration from blissful but temporary respite into the wider world outside, where one was unsheltered and undefended against the heights of that world’s joys and the troughs of its sorrows.

For some weeks Cosette busied herself with the arrangements in her little house, and her father the untamed garden that surrounded it. But soon these domestic matters, managed as they were with the assistance of good Toussaint, were insufficient to occupy Cosette’s mind and soul, reared as it was on the convent’s disciplined and scholarly diet. For his part, the man once known as M. Madeleine had been in the habit of reading a great deal. As such, these two tender-hearted readers took themselves to the largest public collection of books housed in the Bibliothèque Mazarine at the 23 quai de Conti. They would also stroll in the Luxembourg Gardens, and converse while sitting on a bench near the fountain, about the state of the country and the passers-by, but they were never more content than under the Gothic roof of that great library, sitting side by side with their noses in books. 

Within those majestic walls built at the behest of a Cardinal, Cosette learned about the injustices of kings, the fundamental inequality of absolute monarchism, and the construction of the Republic. 

From Voltaire she learned to decry all forms of slavery and indentured servitude, though she was less sure about the faith he placed in enlightened rulers who might rule above class interests and keep a firm but tolerant reign on society as a whole. From Rousseau, she learned about social revolution. _Liberty,_ he wrote, _was not to be found in any existing form of government, it was in the hearts of free men.._

As previously noted, Cosette had no mother who might have taken objection to this method of passing the time. But Cosette had no use for silk dresses or balls or such other fancies that would have occupied girls fairer and more well-born than she. Her father could find no objection in Cosette choosing to spend her hours in companionship with books rather than the less fair sex, and this motherless girl was permitted to read the _Discourse on Inequality_ , which gave her nightmares for weeks on end, and _The Social Contract_ , which did not. 

Cosette fell into the habit of discussing her reading with her father at the end of each day. As the months progressed, her remarks also progressed in complexity, as well as difficulty.

“Papa, you told me last week, when we were discussing the recent regulations on printing presses, that men ought to obey the laws,” she exclaimed one day. “But suppose the laws are themselves unjust? Mme. de Staël said that laws which protect some persons and not others are unjust. And M. Rousseau said that existing laws are only useful to those who own and as injurious to those who do not! And these regulations seem to me to be designed to oppress those printers who print stories that are opposed to M. de Polignac and his government, who together must own half of Paris!”

Her father, formerly the uncle to seven small children, a previous nineteen-year tenant of the bagne, and a present fugitive from that precept most unfairly described as Justice, warily eyed this beloved child.

“It may not be for private citizens to determine themselves whether any laws are unjust,” he began, carefully.

Cosette stamped her foot. “This kind of thinking is very well for those who are land-owners and those who rule,” she said. “M. Rousseau said that our laws just give _the weak new burdens, the strong new powers, and irretrievably destroy natural freedom._ This terrible inequality must be why the people revolted!”

Her father, who knew something of such inequality, said, “Surely that must be so. But I do not believe revolution has been the cure for all ills. There is still injustice in the world.”

Cosette saw the truth to this: in the faces of the poor and needy she saw every week, when her father took her into the slums to hand out alms; the women and children whose weakness society chose to exploit; the business owners who shuttered their shops and refused to help; the gendarmes who looked the other way. 

In 1830, de Polignac’s already unpopular government sought to pass what came to be known as the July Ordinances, which dissolved the Chamber of Deputies, suspended the liberty of the press and excluded the commercial middle-class from future elections. There was public outcry. Newspapers defied the bans, and open insurrection broke out in the streets. Cosette was thrilled, but her father, fearing the outbreak of violence that pitted workingmen and students and old soldiers against the King’s cavalry and heavily-armed gendarmerie, insisted that they remain indoors during what became later known as the Three Glorious Days of fighting that followed. 

Confined to Rue Plumet, deprived of her visits to the Bibliothèque Mazarine, Cosette chafed restlessly while the unrest continued. Surely now true liberty would be given to all people, and unjust laws would be re-written? But she was soon bitterly disappointed: when all was said and done, the ministers had merely exchanged one king for another, and still neither the middle-class men, nor women of any class, were permitted to vote.

Her father, seeing Cosette’s youthful heartbreak, sought to distract her from her disillusionment. They fell into the habit of long walks in the early morning, where the streets are deserted and the birds are singing, in the least frequented spots, solitary nooks and forgotten places of Paris. On these perambulations, Cosette became almost as a child again, taking off her hat and running unselfconsciously in the meadows. Her father smiled to see it: Nature comforted her where her books, which had betrayed her, did not. 

One morning in late autumn, they found themselves near the Barrière du Maine. It was daybreak; a delightful and stern moment. All was peace and silence; there was no one on the road.

All at once Cosette exclaimed: “Father, I should think someone is coming yonder.” 

Her father raised his eyes. Surely enough, there was a strange procession coming down the boulevard of the ancient Barrière du Maine. 

As it drew nearer, the procession was outlined behind the trees in the slowly-dawning light. It was a terrible sight, at once both sepulchral and living — wagons in a single file, consisting of long ladders placed on two wheels and attached to four harnessed horses. On these ladders strange clusters of men were being drawn. In the faint light, these men appeared more dead than alive, seated twelve on a side, back to back, facing the passers-by, their legs dangling in the air. Around each of their necks hung an iron collar, and from each collar all the men shared a long chain. In the back and front of each vehicle, two men armed with muskets stood erect, each holding one end of the chain under his foot. 

The men massed upon the drays allowed themselves to be jolted along in silence. Chained like animals, they were thin and shivering with the chill of morning. All they wore were ragged blouses and linen trousers, and their bare feet were thrust into wooden shoes. Some were dull-eyed, some were weeping. 

An escort troop of uniformed men rode alongside. From time to time the sound of a blow became audible as the cudgels descended on shoulder-blades or skulls, even though it was not discernible what the chained men had done to merit such punishment, and even though they appeared already half-dead besides.

“How terrible!” Cosette murmured as this fearsome procession rattled past. “Father, did you see what those guards were doing to those men in the carts? Who are they — galley-slaves? Convicts?” She paused, suddenly realising that her father was not paying her the least bit of attention. 

“Father, what is wrong?” For his eyes had assumed a frightful expression, and he was shivering as if he were one of those men in the carts, even though he was wearing his good woollen coat.

Cosette had not been frightened by the sight of the poor men in the carts, but she was now terrified by that which had overtaken that venerable man whom she called her father. He remained speechless and staring for many moments after the procession had moved on. Eventually, threading his hand through her arm, she led him from the Barrière du Maine, managed to flag down a fiacre, and brought him back to Rue Plumet.

When they were home, she helped him take off his coat, made him a large cup of coffee, and seated herself beside him at the dining table.

“I want you to tell me what the matter is, Father. If you insist on keeping me in the dark, I shall return to the convent, or find Mlle. Corneille; you do not know it, but she has given me her address. I may be just still a girl, and I will always love you and be indebted to you, but I have the right to know about my past.” 

For a moment, she thought her benefactor might weep, as he did the last time she had tried to insist on answers. He seemed to have aged ten years in the short space of time between leaving the house that morning and this return; his rheumy eyes scoured her face. She did her best to hold his gaze resolutely, like her heroes of the Enlightenment. 

In the end, he did not weep, but heaved a trembling sigh. “Yes. Yes, my child, you deserve to know the truth.”

His real name was Jean Valjean. Her mother’s name had been Fantine. She had worked in a factory in Montreuil-sur-Mer which Valjean had owned, and had been unjustly dismissed from her position. Thereafter, she had taken sick; though Valjean had seen the error of his ways and sought to help her, she had died. Cosette's real father, a bourgeois, had abandoned Fantine when Cosette was a small child, and Fantine had been forced to leave Cosette with strangers while she worked herself to the bone. Before her death, she had asked Valjean to take Cosette into his care, and he had kept the promise ever since. 

Cosette listened in silence. As Valjean revealed to her her mother’s story at last, she felt feverish, and a little shivery, as if she might faint. She didn’t, however. 

When Valjean finally stopped speaking, she heard herself say, in a high-pitched voice, “My poor mother! How unfairly she was treated! Mme. de Gouges was right, it’s always the woman who is made to suffer by the high-born —” And to her utter embarrassment, she flung her arms about Valjean’s neck and wept as she had not done since she was a very little child.

That good man let her tears fall on his cravat for a long space. Eventually, he said, with even more gentleness, “There is more. The men you saw just now were the convicts of the chain-gang, which had set out before daybreak from Bicêtre. I know this because I was one of them, not so long ago. In 1795 I stole a loaf of bread to feed my sister’s starving children, and was sent to prison in Toulon, where I spent nineteen years. Under this cravat, I still bear the scar from the iron collar I wore, in the same way as those poor brutes you saw this morning.”

Cosette made herself look; she told herself she wasn’t going to be sick. She couldn’t stop crying, but a furious rage had seized in her heart. 

Over the next weeks and months, Valjean remained in the house, and spent much of the time in bed, as if the surrender of his secrets had sapped away all his strength. He refused all Cosette’s attempts to summon medical help. Cosette remained at his side. At times it felt as if their roles were reversed: that she was now the parent, and he the child, for she was often compelled to chide him to wash himself, and to feed him soup from a spoon.

Outwardly, with both Valjean and Toussaint, she was patience itself. All the while, within her, a fire was blazing.

Nineteen years in prison for a theft born out of hunger and desperation? Not just one but nine lives destroyed? How could any world contain such injustice and not deserve to be burned to its very bones? Cosette didn’t know, but she could not let such terrible inequality go without redress.

Finally, as the new year arrived, Valjean recovered his strength. Cosette found herself able to leave the house once more, both with the convalescing invalid on her arm, and on her own. She sought out Mlle. Corneille, and journalists, and like-minded persons who might be interested in the plight of unwed mothers and prison reform. These encounters, though few and far between, were enough to try Cosette’s wings, and prepare her to take flight.

In the spring, as she was mounting the steps of the Bibliothèque Mazarine, she was almost bowled over by two well-dressed young men in a hurry. They swerved to avoid crashing into her; the books they were carrying fell to the ground. 

Cosette bent to pick one up. _Portalis’ Discourse on Statutory Interpretation_ , it was entitled. It appeared these young men were law students.

As she straightened up, she heard one of the men say, _sotto voce_ , “Pretty, but badly dressed!”

“Thank you, Mademoiselle,” said the other man, hastily, but the damage was done.

As it happened, Cosette had been beautiful for a tolerably long time before she became aware of it herself. Prettiness, or lack of it, made no difference to her, as her mind was fixed on other matters. But by that observation and from that moment, she understood in a flash how men might appraise the regularity of her features as well as the details of her dress. She drew herself up with dignity, confronting these men in the same way as she would later take the fight to all others, as both judge and executioner.

“A conventional remark, but not an unexpected one, emanating from gentlemen like yourselves! For Article IV of the Declaration of the Rights of Woman and the Female Citizen declares: _the only limit to the exercise of the natural rights of woman is the perpetual tyranny that man opposes to it_.”

There was a very long pause, and then the first man, a dark-haired, handsome fellow said, cautiously, “Why, Mademoiselle, I apologise for my rudeness, and I humbly agree with you. For the esteemed author points out in Article X of the Female Declaration, that although women are fully punishable under French law, it is unconscionable that men still continue to deny them the right to vote and to address the public from the speaker's rostrum."

Cosette was momentarily taken aback. She did not expect the gentleman to be well-spoken, or deferential, or educated in female emancipation besides. 

“I am glad to hear it,” she retorted. “Not all men, nor, more’s the pity, all women, consider what they have gained from the Revolution. Nor are they ready, as Madame de Gouges has said, to overcome barriers erected by the bourgeoisie and create a new and equal society befitting our great nation.”

The young men seemed stunned by her words, in a way that they had failed to be stunned by her manner or dress. The one turned to whisper furiously to the other for a moment. Then the first man took a step forward, and bowed his head formally to her.

“Mademoiselle, my name is Courfeyrac, and I am at your service. My companion and I were wondering — if your business today at the Bibliothèque is not pressing — whether you might at all be interested in continuing this political discussion with us? Not far from here, in a small café in the Rue Saint-Michel called the Café Musain, there have gathered some like-minded people who have a particular interest in revolution.”


	2. The Lark's Lieutenants

On a certain afternoon, a hansom-cab passed slowly along the Place Saint-Michel. In it, beside the coachman, sat a young man with curly hair and a distracted expression. He stuck his head out of the window, squinting fixedly at the buildings as they passed as if to search for a particular address. He carried with him a satchel which displayed to passers-by the following name, inscribed in large black letters: MARIUS PONTMERCY.

This young man, a student at the law-school, had the month before quitted the house of his grandfather. His world had been shattered from top to its very bottom. He had sworn he would no longer set foot under the roof of anyone friendly to the royalist cause. Leaving the politics and also the home of his childhood, he had firmly installed himself within that broad Democrat-Bonapartist church that had encompassed the sentiments of his poor father, who had sacrificed his happiness so that his motherless son could obtain the comfortable future which a Gillenormand could guarantee. This ground-breaking matter had been hidden from the young man until recently; he had come from watering Colonel Pontmercy’s gravestone with his tears to cutting all ties with M. Gillenormand and casting himself adrift into the world.

His classmate, one M. Courfeyrac, had taken pity on poor Marius when he discovered him sitting in a daze on the steps of the law-school clutching a rather bulky bag containing all his worldly possessions. 

“Come to my place, sir,” he offered, which was how Marius found himself installed in a chamber of the hotel de la Porte-Saint-Jacques side by side with that gentleman.

After a space of a few days, Marius had become Courfeyrac's friend. Courfeyrac made no demands of him, and asked him no questions, save for one: whether he had any political opinions.

Upon learning Marius’ political views, and also the sad tale of Marius’ papa, he exclaimed, "I must give you your entry to the revolution!" 

He then furnished Marius with the address of the Café Musain, and told him to meet him there the next day after class, which was how Marius found himself in this cab, passing along the Place Saint-Michel in search of the elusive café.

The address Courfeyrac had given him was that of a nondescript building, the café unremarkable, one of a dozen similar establishments in this quarter populated by students. Marius exited the hansom-cab, paid the driver, and hesitated upon the threshold. 

Just then Courfeyrac exited the café. His face lit up when he saw his friend. “You are here!” he said, and took him by the hand, and led him within. 

Marius followed him through the bustling café and down an extremely long corridor, into a room which had two windows and an exit with a private stairway on the little Rue des Gres. It was filled with smoke and the sound of men and women in loud conversation. Nailed to the wall was an old map of France under the Republic, a sign sufficient to excite the suspicion of a police agent in the early days under the constitutional monarchy of Louis-Philippe I.

“Marius, let me present to you the Friends of the A B C,” Courfeyrac said, and to the others, he introduced him with this simple word which Marius did not understand: "A pupil."

“What is the reason for the name?” Marius whispered, in an aside, as he took a seat beside his friend.

Courfeyrac said, “Why — we are the friends of the _Abaissé_ , the debased or the dispossessed; that is to say, the people. It is our fervent desire to elevate the downtrodden of France, by all means that are necessary. We bide our time here in secret, until the moment is at hand.”

The Friends of the A B C were not numerous; it was a secret society in an embryonic form. There, in the back room of the Café Musain, students mingled with men and women of the working-classes. Today, Marius learned the names of those who were gathered in the room: apart from Courfeyrac, there was his great friend and philosopher Combeferre; there was a shy and poorly-dressed man named Jean Prouvaire; Feuilly, a fan-maker; fellow law-students Bahorel and Lesgle, who was also known as Bossuet; Joly, a medical student; a well-dressed grisette named Musichetta; and a thin girl in black damask who gave her name as Euphrasie.

Marius, up to that time solitary and inclined to soliloquy, was more than a little put out by this unusual and diverse group of young people about him. The tumultuousness of these thoughts and voices threw his very being in a commotion. The women spoke familiarly with men who were obviously not related to them in any way but via the communal religion of their intellect. All there debated politics, philosophy, and painting in rapid turns, their discourse far beyond that taught in schools, for such was the wisdom of the streets and the fiery passions of virtuous hearts. 

When Marius had abandoned his grandfather's opinions for the opinions of his dead father, he supposed himself on a fixed path; he now suspected, with uneasiness, and without daring to avow it to himself, that he was not. The lens through which he viewed the world had become obscured, as if the world itself had been altered, and he rather wondered whether the one altered, and irretrievably, was Marius himself. 

There were no sacred cows for those young people. Marius heard extraordinary propositions on every topic, vouchsafed no more fiercely by the men as by the women, and this created further turmoil in his still shy mind.

A theatre poster presented itself, adorned with the title of a romance from the ancient repertory commonly claimed to be Classical. "Down with romances dear to the bourgeois!" cried Bossuet. And Marius heard Combeferre reply: —

"You are right. The bourgeoisie loves classical romance, and the genre must be destroyed utterly, though not for that reason. As Andromeda was chained by her father King Cepheus to the rocks off the Ethiopian coast and left there to be rescued and bedded by Aeschylus’ Perseus, all classic romances which rescind the personhood of the feminine must be expunged from our common experience. Henceforth shall it be decreed: our Cassiopeias and our Medeas, our sisters and our mothers, should be allowed their proper place in romantic drama, and to love as they will without conceding the stage or the scene to paramours or fathers or husbands. We have as our paragon of feminine virtue the divine Musichetta, at whose altar not only you but our brother Joly do pay homage, without requiring her to choose between you as Virgil himself might have."

Musichetta tossed her pretty curls and laughed: “I’d like to see them try!” It was she who out, of all these young people, said the name Napoleon; not a one called him The Emperor. Instead, they all referred to him as "Bonaparte." 

It was to this pertinent topic that the conversation eventually turned, and became more serious besides. 

Bahorel had been making certain remarks to Prouvaire and Courfeyrac about the ill-fated career of the Emperor, and ended those remarks, as one does, with the date: "June 18th, 1815, Waterloo."

At this name of this infamous conflict, in which his beloved father had been injured in battle and had later received his commendation for bravery by no less personage than that respected war general, Marius, who was leaning with his elbows on a table and his head in his hands, sat up and began to gaze fixedly at the audience.

Courfeyrac exclaimed, "What a strange and striking number for a battle. It is Bonaparte's fatal number, and it formed the whole destiny of the man,” which Marius only subsequently understood to be a reference to the Coup of 18 Brumaire which brought the then General to power and ended the French Revolution. In this way did the bloodless coup d'état overthrow the Directory, and replace it with the French Consulate which in its turn was the forerunner of the start of the Napoleonic Empire.

“You mean his entire destiny was housed in this crime, and its punishment?"

It was the girl Euphrasie. She spoke quietly, but there was steel under her soft, youthful tones. The word she mentioned, _crime_ , suddenly overtook Marius, who was already extremely disturbed by Bahorel’s casual reference to Waterloo. This was an indignity which he could not accept.

He got to his feet, and walked over to the map of France that was spread over the far wall, and lay one trembling finger on the island that lay at the base of the map. He said:

"Here is the island of Corsica, which has rendered France very great."

This old-fashioned veneration of the birthplace of Napoleon in this place with its forward ideas was a breath of icy air. Everyone in the room ceased talking, and every eye turned to this newcomer in their midst. 

Combeferre pointed out, in reasonable tones, "But France does not need Corsica to be great, Marius, nor a Bonaparte, either. France is great because she is France."

Marius felt no desire to retreat; he turned towards Combeferre, and his voice burst forth with a vibration which came from a quiver of his very being: —

"God forbid that I should diminish France! But giving Napoleon his due is not diminishing her. Let us address this question! I am a newcomer among you, and I do not know your ways, but I confess that all of them astound me. My grandfather hates the man, but my grandfather wants us to return to the time of the kings and the _Ancien Droit_. You are all young. Who do you admire, if you don’t admire the Emperor? He had everything! He was complete! Within him was the entire sum of man’s progress: he took the genius of Justinian, Caesar, Pascal, Mahomet, Newton, and made those gifts his own. He was legislator, lawyer, indefatigable war hero — all that was good and advanced for the benefit of our country resided in him.” 

All held their peace. Combeferre bowed his head, and the girl Euphrasie was silent. Marius continued with increased enthusiasm, and almost without pausing for breath:

"Let’s be fair, my friends! It is a great destiny for a nation to be an empire if the nation is France and the emperor is Napoleon Bonaparte. To come out of nowhere and to put one’s hand on the sword-hilt, to march and to triumph, to take charge of all countries which one comes across, to defeat princes and decree the falls of destiny, and to change the face of Europe for the better? To raise up all Frenchmen, to make soldiers into kings, to fashion a French Empire in the manner of the ancient Roman one, to be a great nation and to give birth to a grand army, to unify France and her ministers and people, and every breath and thought and idea that is carried within her, to be a civilisation lifted by one man and crowned resoundingly in glory, what greater thing is there?” 

There was a single beat, a collective taken breath, and then —

"To be free," said the girl.

Marius felt these words, spoken coldly and simply, pierce his epic outpouring like a sword-cut and penetrate the breast-plate of his armour. He turned to face his enemy, his ears ringing from the blow, the hot breath and heroism fizzling out of him like air from a very large balloon.

The girl had risen to her feet. She was rather tall; Marius was of medium height, and her gaze was almost level with his. Like the others, she was hatless in the back room of the Musain, and the late afternoon sunlight from the window turned her gold-brown hair into a halo. 

Her eyes were a deep, celestial blue. Where previously Marius had thought her very young, still not far from her schoolbooks, and rather plain in her sober black dress, she now appeared transfigured: a woman, a Boudicca of the British, a virginal Joan of Arc, dazzling and brave, a warrior queen who captures hearts without either wishing or knowing it. 

Their glances met, and Marius experienced the thunder-clap. If he had felt shaken by her first remarks, and pierced by her second, this third wordless encounter caused a sudden blossoming, in the depths of his soul, of an overwhelming emotion, that erupted around him like a burgeoning garden of wildflowers, impregnated with fragrance and with fatal venom. In the moment, Marius did not know its name.

When Marius finally glanced away, he realised the room had emptied. Courfeyrac was no longer there, nor any of the other Friends. He was alone in this place with the girl Euphrasie, who had so thoroughly routed him, and nothing in his world was the same again. 

It was on the tip of his tongue to attempt a rejoinder, and though Marius was dazed and beaten he retained some innate pride which bade him not turn tail from a fight. Then, all of a sudden, they heard someone singing on the stairs as he went. It was Combeferre, and this is what he was singing: —

_“If César had given me glory and war, and I were obliged to quit my mother's love / I would say to great César, "Take back thy sceptre and thy chariot; I prefer the love of my mother."”_

Combeferre sang this old song tenderly, in a way which made the familiar tune sound strange and grand to Marius. That young man had, of course, never known his mother, the lovely young wife of Colonel Pontmercy, who had left her family too soon, and in that moment he found that he missed her dearly. 

Marius turned back to the girl. It seemed her blue eyes could see clearly into the tragedy of his past, and further, that it paled beside the tragedy of her own. 

He found himself stammering, “And what of your own mother, Mademoiselle —?"

"Call me Cosette, citizen," said the girl — for indeed it was she: Jean Valjean’s daughter, transformed by rage, and Mme. de Staël, and the injustices of society, into this figure-head of the Revolution. "And as for my mother: why, she is the Republic herself."


	3. Grantaire encounters an Angel

Grantaire first saw the young man walking around the Luxembourg Gardens one bright afternoon in late April, and he was almost immediately smitten. He could hardly help it; the boy was like a work of art, all high cheek-bones and lightly-curling golden hair, and Grantaire was just a humble artist with a fascination for pretty things.

Had this beautiful young man, this angel, been alone, Grantaire would have gone up to him immediately and basked in the pleasure of his presence for the short amount of time before he would surely have been sent away, and then spent the rest of the afternoon drowning his impulsiveness in a bottle of whatever he could get his hands on.

As it was, the angel was not alone, but instead walking besides a middle-aged woman, almost certainly his mother, from their looks. They appeared to be giving out alms to the beggars who curled up at the sides of the paths, though the poor lady – for they were almost certainly of some higher class, their clothes bright and fashionable and expensive – did not look entirely pleased to be there, staring at the recipients of their alms as if they might leap up at her and grasping her son’s arm each time she heard a noise.

And so Grantaire watched as they made their way through the park, and instead let himself day-dream of an ideal world, where he could sit and watch this angel to his heart’s content.

The pair got closer and ever closer to him, and Grantaire buried his face in the book, Mme. Dacier’s old translation of the Iliad, which he had read countless times before, so it hardly mattered now that he was barely taking a word in, so focussed he was on not meeting the eye of the ever-approaching angel.  
So focused was he, that he didn’t even notice when the angel himself was right in front of him, until he heard a small cough.

Grantaire looked up to meet a pair of remarkably earnest blue eyes and a hand holding out a small parcel of money. And, as besotted as he was by the man at a distance, Grantaire could not stop laughing. He glanced down at himself. Yes, perhaps he was sitting on the curb in the gardens, but he was hardly dressed like one of _les misérables_. He was even reading, for goodness’ sake. The poor and disenfranchised hardly have time to read.

The angel above him pouted, clearly not expecting such a reaction from one to whom he was freely handing money. Grantaire knew in that moment that he could bask in his attention forever, but that he would never be able to stand the curl of doubt and confusion that appeared just then in the young man’s eyes.

“Save your money for those who need it, Monsieur,” he said, attempting to placate the angel, “I have enough of my own to waste.”

“Oh! Thank you for being so honest, Monsieur,” said the beautiful man, and Grantaire would, later, to anyone who would listen to the ramblings of a drunken man (that is, to no-one at all), swear that his voice twinkled like the sun shining off a summer stream.

Grantaire was about to reply with a smattering of ‘I would do anything for you, you fine statue’, when the fine statue in question continued speaking.

“I am glad that you care so much, to want this aid to go to those who truly need it.”

“Well, as far as money goes as aid, it is certainly more helpful for other people than for me. But it will hardly make a difference, at the end of the day.” Grantaire winced even as the words left his mouth. Why did he say that? He wanted the man to stay.

The beautiful blond opened his mouth, likely to spit out a scathing remark at Grantaire’s never-ending cynicism, but he was interrupted by a crisp “Julien!” and his mouth snapped shut, twisting a little.

“I apologise, Monsieur, I have to go. It was nice to meet you.” And the youth, the angel, Julien, rushed back to join his mother. The pair continued their walk around the park.

Grantaire’s eyes followed them until they were gone.

It was almost a week before Grantaire saw the angel again. Not for want of trying, no; he had sat in the Luxembourg Gardens each day, pretending to read but really with his eyes darting around, trying to find the beautiful man who had captured his heart with a glance.

Of course, when he did re-appear, Grantaire did his best to act casually, as though he were not entranced by him.

He was not expecting him to approach again.

“I still don’t need your money, Monsieur,” he said, managing to keep his awe out of his voice as the man’s shadow fell over his book.

“I know. I just wanted to know what you meant, last week. What would you suggest doing to help, if not giving out alms? I truly do want to do what I can.”

“There are certainly groups of students who make some sort of effort to make a practical change.” Grantaire was personally unsure of how much good they could possibly hope to do, but that was beside the point right now. If they ever did get anything done, it would certainly be more helpful to people than giving packets of money to individuals.

Enjolras’ eyes widened. “That does sound good! Oh, are you part of one, Monsieur?”

Grantaire found himself nodding, for some inexplicable reason. He was not, nor had he ever been, nor did he ever intend to be, part of a revolutionary student group. But the look in the angel’s eyes, the excitement, the passion… Grantaire could not bear for it to go.

Julien glanced around. “I should leave, before Maman gets scared again. Tell me about it next time, won’t you… ah, what is your name?”

“Grantaire.”

“Call me Enjolras,” he said. “I hope I shall see you again, Grantaire.”

Enjolras left Grantaire blinded with a brilliant smile.

Having told the beautiful angel Enjolras that he was part of a student group with the aim to better the living conditions for the poor, Grantaire decided that his only possible course of action would be to join one. Of course, he could never return to the Luxembourg Gardens again and thus not have to reveal his lie when next they spoke, but that would result in him never seeing the man again, and Grantaire was not sure that his poor heart could take such a thing.

It was not hard to find such a group: Grantaire prided himself on knowing every café and back-alley in Paris and what was going on at each of them.

There was a group that met in the Musain on that very night, and Grantaire went to meet with them before he could talk himself out of it.

He left the meeting in a daze.

He had expected the group to be passionate and informed and determined, but he had not expected them to be so joyous and friendly and welcoming, especially to him. He had hardly hidden his cynicism at times, but everyone had still made every effort to include him, to talk to him, even after the meeting proper had ended.

He had been caught up, making jokes and puns with Joly and Bossuet, who he easily felt he had known for ever, and he hadn’t even realised how late it was.

The leader, a tallish girl with fierce eyes, had asked him, when he eventually left, whether he would return. He told her yes, without even thinking about it.

They were all ridiculously optimistic and naïve. But he would go back. For Enjolras’ sake.

And, maybe, just maybe, for his own sake too.

The next time Enjolras and his mother came to the Luxembourg Gardens, Grantaire was ready to spend their brief amount of time together telling him about the plans of Les Amis de L’ABC.

However, this time, the man did not stop in front of Grantaire. Instead, he glanced in Grantaire’s direction, flashing him a quick smile.

When they had passed, Grantaire noticed a pristine white handkerchief dropped on the ground in front of him. He scrambled up to collect it. The fabric was delicate, expensive, and monogrammed with a cursive J.E.

A slip of paper fell out of it, landing by Grantaire’s feet.

_Monsieur Grantaire,_  
_My most sincere apologies. My Maman is quite scared of what things people may do. It is all I can do to get her to allow me to come out and help at all, and I fear that if she sees me speak with the same man again, she may forbid our excursions altogether._  
_Our address is the --------------------------------------------------------------------------------. The garden is rather overgrown, we should be able to talk. I will endeavour to be outside around noon. I hope you will come._  
_Yours,_  
_J. Enjolras_

It was certainly not an invitation that Grantaire had expected, but it was a welcome one. It would certainly be better than snatched conversations in the Luxembourg Gardens. They would have time to have proper conversations, away from the over-protective eye of Mme. Enjolras.

He considered running behind the pair, ostensibly to return Enjolras’ delicate handkerchief, but really to confirm that he was the one to receive the message. But, if his mother was truly so anxious about the actions of those around her, Grantaire did not want to scare her to the extent that Enjolras would not get to walk around outside again.

Instead he looked back up to where the blond was standing, further down the path as though nothing had happened. Eventually, Enjolras glanced behind him, and Grantaire waved the handkerchief a little. From the distance they were apart, Grantaire could not see the expression on Enjolras’ face, but he could make out a small nod before the man turned his attention back to his mother.

The alley onto which Enjolras’ garden backed was quiet and leafy, and took Grantaire longer to find than he had expected, though he still managed to arrive not long after the time that Enjolras had suggested. He knew most of Paris as well as the back of his hand, but apparently this particular lane had escaped his attention. That was, perhaps, why Mme. Enjolras had chosen the house.

He attempted to peek through the foliage, to try and spot Enjolras, but it was too dense to see very far at all.

Grantaire suddenly felt that this endeavour might not be as successful as the pair of them had hoped. He could hardly shout through the bushes to try and gain his friend’s – were they friends? – attention. How was this going to work?

A rustle from behind him caused him to jump half a foot in the air. He turned around to see a hand sticking out of the bushes.

“Enjolras?” he hissed. He hoped it was, otherwise this would get rather awkward, rather quickly.

“Grantaire!” came the reply. Grantaire hurried towards the voice, and found Enjolras pulling back leaves, his face lighting up in a bright grin when he saw Grantaire looking back at him. “You found me!”

Grantaire could hardly help the similar grin echoing across his own face. The enthusiasm of Grantaire’s youth, which he had lost, so he thought, through years of simply living, was trying to recover itself in the face of Enjolras’ youthful joy.

Grantaire could live in that feeling forever.

“You said you were part of a group of student revolutionaries?” Of course. This was not a social call. At least, now, Grantaire was not lying to Enjolras.

And so he told Enjolras. He told him about the determined leader, Euphrasie, whom everyone called Cosette, and the plans the group had made. The boy listened with rapt attention, as though this was the greatest thing he had ever heard.

Though, Grantaire supposed, if he were shut in this house and gardens, and only allowed out with his mother’s supervision, it quite possibly was.

“Of course, whether they will actually achieve their goals is another matter entirely.” Grantaire could not help but end his description with his own cynicism, which echoed through his thoughts no matter how much optimism he could leech off Enjolras.

Enjolras’ blue eyes flashed like those of an avenging angel, and he launched into a speech of how much it could help, it would help. Grantaire could only bask in his glory. He would have made a brilliant leader of his own, in another world. But as it was Grantaire was his only audience.

It made it all the more intense.

They spoke for hours, or so it felt, until a cloud covered the sun and Enjolras decided he had to go in before his Maman got worried.

It was the first time that Grantaire and Enjolras had spoken for more than a snatched moment, but it certainly would not be the last.

Grantaire continued to go to meetings at the Musain, and he continued to relay the information to Enjolras.  
He probably should have felt like a glorified messenger boy, but strangely he didn’t.

Instead, he felt like he was doing something almost _worthwhile_. Their grand plans to change the world would not work, of course they wouldn’t, but the look on Cosette’s face each time she spoke about the future, the look on Enjolras’ face each time he discovered what people were doing to help, made him almost start believing again.

“General Lamarque is dead!” came a shout. Grantaire’s attention was jolted from the conversation around him to the short gamin at the front of the room. Until this point, it had been a meeting like any other, but Grantaire could feel the atmosphere change like a gunshot in a silent room.

There was silence for a few seconds, before the room burst into sound, bustling into planning. It was not time for the casual conversations and jokes that had filled the room only moments before.

Grantaire was dragged into conversations about arrangements and locations, and suddenly, suddenly, the danger felt very real.

The meeting was barely over, the plans barely confirmed, when Grantaire ran out of the door. He only knew that Enjolras would want to know, needed to know.

He was one of the very people that they were going to try and tear to the ground.

He needed to know so he could stay hidden. So he could stay safe.

Grantaire did not know how his heart would take it, if Enjolras got hurt.

Grantaire had no intention of going to the barricade. It was a place for idealistic young men to go to die. Grantaire had no belief in their causes, and as much as he counted Les Amis de L’A B C among his closest friends, their enthusiasm had not rubbed off on him as much as they thought it had.

He didn’t go to Lamarque’s funeral. He didn’t even take Joly and Bossuet’s invitation to join them for a late breakfast at the Corinth.

No, instead he found himself wandering the streets of Paris, aimlessly, not going anywhere in particular, not looking for anyone.

His feet took him on a familiar path without his consent.

He stopped outside the fence to Enjolras’ garden. He shook his head. He had to leave. This was no place to be, no place to draw attention to. Even if he wasn’t getting involved, hanging around the garden on a fancy street was not the place to be when a revolution happened.

He should be at home.

He turned on his heel, ready to go. To get somewhere safe, to come back and find Enjolras again when all this madness was over.

But, out of the corner of his eye, he spotted a piece of paper sticking out between leafy branches. Grantaire reached for it, hand trembling slightly.

There was no-one else who could have left it. No-one else it could have been left to.

_Dear R,_

_If you are reading this, then I have gone off to the barricade, and have not yet returned. You assured me that you would not be there, that it is a fruitless endeavour. But I know that I can never be satisfied with myself if I sit here and do nothing while good people fight the good fight for the good of others._

_I do not know if I shall see you again, but I wanted to give you my most heartfelt thanks for being such a dear friend to me._

_Ever yours,_  
_E_

Shit.


	4. A young man leaves home

The barricade was easier to get to than it probably should have been, Enjolras thought. The streets were largely empty, probably due to the protest at the funeral. Enjolras could hear it from his room, and it was that noise that had persuaded him to make the final leap and leave.

It had been a long time since Enjolras had last been able to explore the city. Since his Father had died, Maman had kept him inside, where she could make sure he was safe. He did not blame her, and he did feel bad that she would soon realise that he had left.

The note he had left behind for her would probably make it worse.

Perhaps he was a terrible son, ungrateful and cruel. But he could face that. He could not face being a terrible _citizen_ , turning a blind eye to the suffering of the people who could do nothing to help themselves.

And so he had told his mother he would be out in the garden, and slipped through a loose bar in the gate which he had found a few weeks ago. One note on his pillow for his Maman, one in the branches for hi- for Grantaire.

And then Enjolras was alone on the streets of Paris.

Only one man attempted to prevent his journey to find Grantaire’s Amis de L’A B C, a police inspector with a stern expression who told him that he should get off the streets before the fighting began. Enjolras presumed the man thought him younger than his twenty years, given his concern. In any case, he told the man he was on his way to his father’s house; his lie was believed and he carried on his journey.

He did not have far left to go at all.

However, when he finally got onto the barricade, it was to raised guns and suspicious glares and accusations of spying. A spy. They thought he was a spy. And how could he assuage such fears? Declaring oneself not to be a spy is hardly evidence enough.

And Grantaire was not here, of course he wasn’t. Because he had said, he had specifically told Enjolras, that he wasn’t going to go. He had told Enjolras the plans and said that he was going to stay away.

And if Les Amis thought Grantaire had abandoned them, they would hardly believe Enjolras’ pleas that they knew each other.

He had come all this way, and now he was going to spend the whole night tied up and hidden away. Because what? Because he had come in nice, finely-tailored clothes? What spy would want to stick out so obviously?

He had tried this line of argument, but a spirited girl, who must be the leader Cosette who Grantaire had spoken so highly of, had barely acknowledged him. And apparently that he knew her name was another strike against him.

He had just about given up on resisting, accepting that his ill thought-out plan had failed, resigning himself to his fate, when a shout came from behind him.

“Wait!” Enjolras almost melted in relief. Grantaire. “Wait, Cosette. I can vouch for him. He’s a friend of mine.”

Cosette relaxed a little, though her expression was still slightly pinched. “Perhaps next time, R, you should advise your _friends_ not to go running around dressed like poor little rich boys.”

“Aww, Cosette, but what if he _is_ a poor little rich boy?” Grantaire was by his side now, and slung his arm over Enjolras’ shoulder in what was probably intended to be a friendly embrace. It was closer than he had ever been to Grantaire before. He found- he found that he liked it.

Cosette merely rolled her eyes and turned away, heading towards a group who Enjolras presumed were also key members of the Amis who had organised this particular barricade.

Grantaire moved his arm away from Enjolras, and a sense of cold hit him almost immediately. He wanted that arm back, he wanted Grantaire close. Instead, Grantaire turned towards him.

“What are you doing here, Enjolras? It’s so, it’s so dangerous. You should have stayed safe at home.” It felt like ice through Enjolras’ chest.

“What, stayed at home and done nothing, knowing that people were going to be out here risking their lives to try and do what I have always wanted to do? Knowing that you were going to be out here risking your life?” He didn’t, that wasn’t what he had meant to say. But there was truth in it.

Grantaire looked like his heart was breaking. “Enjolras. Enjolras, I wasn’t going to come. You know that, otherwise you wouldn’t have left me the note. I was going to stay away and stay safe, because I know there is no way that this is going to end well. Everyone’s going to _die_ , Apollo, we need to go.”

Something inside Enjolras shifted, and he did not think that it was in a good way, and he was not sure exactly what had caused it.

Grantaire’s admission that he thought that this was pointless, this thing that Enjolras had always striven for? Or the fact that he had managed to put Grantaire into a dangerous situation, where he did not want to be? Or the fact that Grantaire thought that Enjolras would possibly be able to abandon this place that he had risked everything to get to?

“Grantaire, I… Wait.” Out of the corner of his eye, Enjolras suddenly saw Cosette and a few others talking to a man who looked strikingly familiar. Which was odd, as really, Enjolras did not see enough people for anyone to be familiar.

He took a few steps closer, and then a few more. He could hear Grantaire following behind him. “Enjolras, what’re you _doing_?”

“I know that man, I’ve _seen_ him.” Enjolras replied quietly, almost absent-mindedly, trying desperately to filter through his memories to work out where…

The police inspector who had tried to stop him from coming.

“He’s an inspector!” Enjolras said, intending it just for Grantaire’s ears, but too excitedly and too loud not to catch the attention of several around him, including Cosette and the inspector himself.

Cosette’s eyebrows furrowed. The inspector raised an eyebrow.

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” the inspector said, but hearing his voice only made Enjolras more certain of the man’s identity.

“Yes I do! I saw you on my way here. You told me to go home!”

“Enj,” said Grantaire, gripping his elbow tightly, “you can’t just make accusations like that.”

“No, the pretty cove is right,” came a loud, high pitched voice from somewhere to his right. They all turned their heads to find a gap-toothed boy of around ten perched on a barrel of something or other. “That there’s Inspector Javert, as I live and breathe.”

The inspector went wide-eyed, attempting to dash for an escape, but he was quickly grabbed by the men who had been with Cosette. Her eyes narrowed.

“Tie him up in the Corinth,” she said, “we’ll work out what to do with him later.” She then turned to Enjolras. “Thank you for noticing. Sorry we pegged you for a spy earlier.” Enjolras gave her a small nod. He was glad to be of help.

He was not sure if she actually saw it, however, because she very quickly span to look at the young gamin again. “And you, Gavroche, need to get out of here. You’re far too young.”

The boy, Gavroche, looked like he was about to fight her, but she raised her eyebrows at him, and he slunk off into the shadows.

Enjolras turned back to Grantaire, who had an expression full of something Enjolras couldn’t quite make out written across his face.

But before he could say anything, there was a cry of “CANNONS!” and the barricade was thrown into a flurry of activity.

It was to be a long night.


	5. Jean Valjean enters the Shadow

This was the great tragedy of Jean Valjean’s life: he had been raised in deprivation in Faverolles, educated in misery and isolation for nineteen years in Toulon, turned from the path of selfishness in Digne, lived with falsehood in Montreuil and solitude in Petit-Picpus. Before the bagne, he had never had a kindly woman companion, after his release, he had never dared to take a lover or even a real friend, for no one could know of the shame he hid in his past. 

There was only one person to whom he had finally revealed his terrible secret, when he had passed his sixth decade, and that was his Cosette. 

Unsurprisingly, Jean Valjean had never, in the whole of forty-two years of his adulthood, known anything of that which may be loved, apart from Fantine’s child. She had come into his barren life and watered it with her childlike devotion, producing within him the tender green growths he had never known before; when she had discovered that which he had been keeping from her, terrified she would turn away from his wickedness, she had embraced him instead, and sought to convince him that it had been society’s unjustness that had been to blame, and not the man himself. 

In short, Jean Valjean might not have sired this abandoned child, but he loved her as a father as well as a mother, who adored her and only her, who held her as his light, his home, his family, his country, his paradise.

He had tried to keep her safe in the insurgency of 1830 which had seen the fall of the Bourbons and the rise of the house of Orléans; he had had less success keeping her innocent of his secrets. He ought to have known he would not succeed in preventing her from taking to the streets in the wake of General Lamarque’s demise. As a girl she had been a lark; now she was a falcon, determined to test her wings on behalf of her poor dead mother, and the downtrodden people of France. 

Over the months since she had learned about his past, she had felt increasingly free to traverse Paris most determinedly on her own, without him or Toussaint to escort her. Occasionally she would return to Rue Plumet in the company of Mlle. Corneille or one or two of her friends from the convent. During the cholera outbreak in the spring of 1832, she had been escorted by young law students whom she introduced as Courfeyrac and Boussuet. 

It should be confessed that Valjean had not been well pleased at the prospect of his dear child keeping company with young men, but when he had seen fit to raise the issue with her she had smiled and patted his cheek and told him not to worry. “They are not paying court to me, Papa,” she said, “for they are my brothers of the Revolution.”

Valjean did, however, worry; he knew the past winter had taken a toll on his ordinarily robust health, and that he would not be able to protect Cosette forever, particularly as she insisted on keeping the hours she did and taking to the streets on behalf of the cause that she and her political friends were working towards. 

Perhaps this was why Cosette had chosen to not tell him the truth right away upon Lamarque’s demise. Instead, she had left word with him that he should wait at home for her for dinner. While stories began to emerge regarding open insurrection in the streets, of soldiers taking aim at citizens in the public square, and barricades being erected across Paris in brave defiance, Valjean did not leave the house; instead, Toussaint and he stayed up well past their habitual dinner-time, waiting for her. The girl did not come.

Finally, when it was almost midnight, a young gamin arrived at No. 55 Rue Plumet with a note for Valjean; he professed to have just come from the barricades at the Rue de la Chanvrerie.

_“Dear Father, it has been my turn to keep the truth from you for a little while. I am sorry for it, but I am not sorry for the choice I have made — to fight for an end to injustice and a better tomorrow for our people, so the wrongs which were done to my mother and to you will never again be suffered by any others. Though we may not leave this place, I hope I will make you proud. I love you. Please stay safe, and remember your Cosette.”_

Jean Valjean read this fatal missive with a calm that resembled the coldness of the statue.

He measured the terrible step which his destiny had taken without his having a suspicion of the fact. His world was on the brink of a precipice: his beloved child had determined, with the great and foolhardy courage of youth, to sacrifice her life on the altar of the people, and the unprecedented and heart-rending thing about it was that she professed it to be for his sake. All the light of his life had departed, while he still fancied that he beheld the sun.

Sending up a brief prayer, drawing on the unnatural strength imbued in him by the Bishop of Digne, and by God, he set aside his own clamouring despair and considered how best he could help his child.

About an hour later, Jean Valjean went out in the complete costume of a National Guard, and with his arms. He had a loaded gun and a cartridge-box filled with cartridges.

It took him the better part of two hours to approach the barricade, walking along the little streets and doubling his steps to avoid the worst of the military’s blockades. The streets were filled with soldiers patrolling as well as dozing, and empty of citizens. Windows were shuttered and doors were barred; no flags of support hung from the doorposts as they had done in 1830, to defend the Charter and the free press and to defy de Polignac and the Bourbon Empire. Here and there he found the remnants of fighting, broken cobblestones and furniture littering the pavements and in one terrible instance in the side street beside the Palais Royal, several corpses of young men who had been cut to pieces before they could even reach the barricades.

Valjean’s countenance retained its statue-like calm, but that stern exterior masked the depths of his despair. No father would wish to consider his child in the midst of this insurrection, which seemed in this moment to be devoid of all hope of success and even survival, or that the same cold fate as had befallen these would-be rebels might await that child and all those who stood with her.

Finally he reached the Chanvrerie by way of Mondétour lane, having not encountered any difficulties or confrontation which he could not, thanks to his dress of a National Guardsman, overcome. It was almost three o’clock in the morning when he arrived behind the lines at the old wine-shop. There was a throng of men and women who numbered some thirty-seven in all; they were debating how five persons could leave their posts while only four National Guard uniforms had been produced. 

Quietly, Valjean removed his own coat and placed it on the pile with the rest.

The commotion aroused was indescribable.

“Who is this? Surely not another spy?” demanded one young man, whom Valjean recognised as Cosette’s law student friend, Bossuet.

“I know him,” declaimed a familiar voice, the sweetest voice in the world, and Cosette rushed forward to throw herself into his arms.

Her hair was knotted under a boy’s cap; she was dressed in unfamiliar men’s breeches. There was blood on her red coat that did not seem to belong to her. Her blue eyes looked as if they had seen an abyss of horrors and conquered all of them; they were now filled with fear, but not for herself. “You shouldn’t be here, Father! You know that we are about to die?”

“Not if I can help it,” Valjean murmured, his heart almost too full for words.

The daylight increased rapidly; soon dawn arrived. The barricade was stronger than on the occasion of the first attack. Since the departure of the five and the arrival of Jean Valjean, they had increased its height still further, by dint of the paving stones that they had torn up along three houses more, until they were walled in on three streets, in front on the Rue de la Chanvrerie, to the left on the Rues du Cygne and de la Petite Truanderie, and to the right on the Rue Mondétour.

To Valjean’s eye, the barricade was really almost impregnable, but although no one could get in, it was equally true that no one could get out. “A fortress but a rat hole too,” said Courfeyrac with a laugh.

Cosette frowned. “We shan’t be holed up like rats,” she said. “Even if the people are too afraid to come out to demonstrate their support, we shall still show them the courage of our convictions, won’t we?” 

The men and women around her raised a ragged cheer. Valjean wondered despairingly how he could possibly persuade his daughter and her comrades that it would not be cowardly to lay down their arms and save their own lives. From what he had seen in the streets, it would not seem as if the people would come forward. They had paid too dear a price in blood in 1830, and earlier in the cholera outbreak in the spring. This brave stand on the barricades was likely doomed to fail.

For a moment he allowed himself to consider what Cosette might do if he simply picked her up and rushed from the barricades with her, carrying her to safety. A foolish thought, of course: they would most likely be stopped by soldiers and shot, or imprisoned. And in any case, he would never again countermand her choices. After all, had she not said it was for him that she was fighting? If it was her wish to spend her life on these stones, he would stand with her, and count it as a blessing to be permitted to die alongside her. 

“We shall show them all,” said a young man who was standing near to Valjean, clutching two pistols; he spoke in educated tones, and even more fervently than the others. Cosette turned to smile at him, and he smiled helplessly back.

Valjean glanced from his daughter’s face to that of the young man, and observed the look in those dark eyes as they gazed longingly into Cosette’s blue ones. In a flash, the father understood: here was a well-bred bourgeois boy, who had fallen in love with Cosette, and who was now as willing to lay down his life alongside hers.

Had he encountered this youngster on the streets of Paris — at the Luxembourg Gardens, perhaps, or lurking outside the garden gate at Rue Plumet — Valjean’s soul might have been moved to anger toward him, for showing such impertinence as to pay court to Valjean’s treasured child and even seek to steal her away. But encountering this young man upon the barricades, who had been led to this desperate place by an equally desperate love, Valjean felt his soul fill with nothing more than compassion. Could he, Valjean, who had loved Cosette more than anything in this world and the next, not help but have pity on another poor soul who loved her as much?

He watched as his daughter and her swain and the other lieutenants made arrangements for the dispositions at the barricades: the distributions of arms and cartridges, the taking of strategic positions. One of the scouts returned to inform them that the artillery had arrived at the barricades at Saint-Merry, and that they could expect the same treatment shortly.

The truth of this statement arrived in no more than an hour. A cannon was wheeled slowly into the road, with six artillery-men pushing the piece. It was fully loaded and about to fire; everyone could see the smoke of the burning lint-stock.

“Incoming!” shouted Cosette. “Everyone down!” And they all did, save for Valjean, who could see the cannon was not properly aimed, and stood watch even as Cosette’s young man put his arms around her in an attempt to shield her with his body.

The cannon-ball shot into the barricade with no great force, and buried itself in the mass of rubbish. At the most there was an omnibus wheel broken, and an old cart was demolished. On seeing this, the barricade burst into laughter.

“That’s a damp squib,” Courfeyrac said, grinning. 

The young man helped Cosette to her feet. “Thank you, Marius,” she said, and at last Valjean knew his name.

After this incident, there were two more discharges and then there was a lull in the fighting: the artillery-men were clearly considering their next move. Cosette, who had been keeping watch at the peak of the barricade, with Marius as her shadow, climbed down and beckoned Valjean over. “Father, I think the soldiers have stood down for now. Do you think you can get our wounded out of here?” 

She knelt beside one of these poor souls, a young man in a white shirt whose name Valjean did not know, and put her hand against his face. The wounded man groaned, and Valjean helped her lift him; together, they carried the man into the wine-shop.

Cosette continued to press him, saying, urgently, “You could take Gavroche, too! We sent him away to you, but he’s returned, and this is no place for him.”

Valjean shook his head. “I’m not leaving without you, my child. Not even to save the little boy.” The pallets at the rear of the wine shop were already filled with the wounded and the dying. Valjean looked at a door at the back of the room. “Ought we put this poor man in there, instead?”

“No, that’s where we left the spy, and poor M. Mabeuf’s body,” Cosette said. “Rest him here, on the fauteuil, instead.” 

Valjean did as she bade him, and then he said, “What’s this about a spy?”

“Some policeman named Javert, who came here in disguise, to infiltrate our group… Father, what is it? You’ve gone all pale!”

At the sound of this name, it was as if Valjean had passed suddenly into a miasma of darkness. At one end of this terrible fog was the beginning of his road — nineteen years of deprivation in Toulon, the rows of prisoners toiling in the work-yard and huddling together in the salle, and standing over them with whip at the ready, a grim young guard. Then at the other end, the implacable inspector who had dogged his every step in Montreuil, and, when Madeleine was exposed at last, had confronted that fraudster over Fantine’s deathbed and sworn he would bring Valjean to justice. 

“Javert? Here?” he said, slowly, and walked to the threshold of the tap-room to see for himself.

There, sure enough, tied with ropes to the table of the tap-room, was that tall, terrifying figure, that lantern jawed face, that dog-wolf in men’s clothing, that had haunted so many long years of his life, and stalked his dreams for so many more.

“Jean Valjean,” that man said, almost graciously. “How perfectly simple to find you here.”

“It has been a very long time, Inspector,” Valjean said. Javert had pursued him to Paris; he ought to have realised that even though he might be about to die this day upon the barricades, he would not be able to escape from this nemesis; that his fate and Javert’s would always be bound together.

“Not long enough for you,” Javert said. “Did I not tell you we would see each other again?”

“You did,” Valjean said. At his elbow, Cosette hissed, “Father, you know this man?”

“I do,” he said to her. “He was a prison guard in the bagne, and also my inspector of police when I was mayor of Montreuil. He sought to arrest your mother, who was wrongly accused of assaulting a bourgeois, and then when I revealed myself to be false, he sought to arrest me.”

“I remember someone chasing us when we got to Paris,” Cosette whispered; her face took on the same pallor as it had borne as a frightened child. “Was it him? Why is he here?”

“Yes, it was he. And as for why he is here — well! God may be trying to tell us something,” although in the moment Valjean could not discern what that lesson could possibly be.

Perhaps Javert was also himself unsure. “Have you come to kill me at last?” he asked Valjean, trying to raise his head off the table so that he could fix Valjean with the steely glare he remembered. “Look how the tables have turned!”

“They have turned indeed, at least for the moment,” Valjean agreed. He stepped forward and looked his enemy full in the face for the first time in years. There was silver in Javert’s hair, and new lines in that familiar face, but otherwise he seemed as Valjean remembered him.

“Will you kill me in front of the girl? If so, do it quick. I don’t need any favours from you.”

“I would kill you myself for speaking this way about him!” Cosette burst out, thrusting herself forward. Her eyes were hot with rage, she was every inch the passionate revolutionary, Diana in full flight, no longer anything childlike about her. 

Javert let loose a short laugh, but Valjean could see that underneath the courage and implacable demeanour, the inspector was not unafraid. He did truly expect the young insurgents to be merciless, and even more he expected cruelty from Valjean himself. Fully cognisant of his own pride and his own weakness, Valjean knew Javert had reason to fear him.

And really, could Javert be entirely to blame for his previous actions? He had caused immeasurable hardship to Fantine, but even there poor Fantine’s fate had been determined by Cosette’s absent father and by Madeleine himself. And in Toulon, in Montreuil, in Paris itself, Javert had been doing what the Law obliged him to, unswervingly loyal and dogged to a fault. He might have acted without kindness or compassion, but his conduct had been sanctioned by the unjust authority he so blindly served. Valjean knew that he could not harm this man and call it righteous; God Himself as well as the state and the statutes would never countenance it. 

Gently, he held Cosette back. “Please, let me,” he said, and as she subsided, he turned back to the inspector. “You have nothing to fear,” he said, softly. “I won’t take your life. I do not think that I shall escape from this place, but if by chance I do, and see that she is safe, I will turn myself in to you.”

Cosette shifted at his side, clearly distressed by his words. In his turn, far from being pleased at his enemy’s surrender, Javert, too, responded with disbelief. Struggling futilely against his bonds, he muttered, “This is some trick, of course. Don’t try to play me for a fool, Valjean. I’ve hunted you for so many years, I know what you’re truly like.”

Genuinely alarmed that the man might harm himself in his struggles, Valjean placed a hand on Javert’s shoulder. He felt the man subside unwillingly under his touch, sullen and sweating under his dirty clothes. The last time he had touched Javert had been nine years ago in Montreuil.

“Not a trick. I know you’ve been looking for me. And I’m willing to surrender to you for my crimes.”

Javert lifted his jaw stubbornly and glared at him with his tiger’s eyes. “You want to bargain with me, is that it? To save the girl’s life? You must know you can’t bribe me like this. Kill me, rather.”

Valjean _did_ know it, at that. Javert had always been infallible: rigid and diligent and entirely scrupulous, intolerant of anything save for perfection, an exactitude that he applied, without mercy, to himself. And in his turn, Valjean had thought that Cosette was the only person alive who truly knew him, but that wasn’t true. Javert had always known him; he had known Valjean for thirty-five years and had been aware of his theft of the Bishop’s silver, and the coin he stole from the Savoyard, and every single other cruel, selfish deed Valjean had done. 

Small wonder that it was strangely freeing to talk to him in this way, with no barriers between them; small wonder Valjean felt almost comfortable, as if for once he did not need to pretend to be anything other than his true self.

He patted Javert’s shoulder awkwardly, and this time the man did not jerk away. “I would never bargain with Inspector Javert. But nor would I harm him. When I can be sure you will not do harm to those here on the barricade, I will contrive a reason to free you.”

Javert’s eyes were deeply sceptical, and so were Cosette’s as she gripped his elbow fiercely.

“You don’t command here, though,” she whispered fiercely. “I do. And I wouldn’t be too quick to free this policeman. He harmed you, and so many others. Doesn’t he deserve death, if anyone does?”

“No one does, my dear, not even those poor soldiers out there who are shooting at your friends and being shot by them. Certainly not this policeman who was only doing his duty.” Very gently, he told her, “This is why I am asking you all to leave your posts and come with me. Don’t throw your lives away.”

Cosette glared at him; a year ago, she would have stamped her foot. “We’re not throwing our lives away! And we’re not leaving,” she said, and turned on her heel and quit the tap-room.

Valjean stared after her in dismay, and then he heard a dry chuckle behind him. Javert was laughing, a noise that ought to have been mocking, but for some reason to his exhausted ears it sounded strangely sympathetic.

“It seems we are all destined to die here, then. For she appears even more stubborn than you are!” 

“Not if I can help it,” Valjean said, for the second time, and he too left the tap-room. Even though they might all be surrounded by soldiers, with cannon-fire rattling around their heads, there was certain to be a means of escape from this barricade for all of them, including Javert. It was up to him to discover it.


	6. Revelations are had, and choices are made

Enjolras wanted to make a difference. He had always wanted to make a difference, for as long as he could remember, since the first time he had seen people hunched up against walls with threadbare shawls drawn around them to keep out the winter chill. Since the time he watched two small, painfully thin boys get beaten by a shopkeeper for taking an apple.

He wanted to make a difference, but he hadn’t realised quite what shape making a difference would take until he was surrounded by shouts and bullets and panic.

Part of him revelled in it. He was meant to be here, he was sure of it. It was some sort of fate.

Part of him was terrified.

When it calmed down again, when the guards had retreated back and were no longer firing on the revolutionaries’ small corner of the city, Enjolras found himself slumped in a corner with Grantaire, legs pressed against each-other, hands intertwined.

He had not realised that this sort of human touch was something he had been missing.

“I’m sorry.” Grantaire’s voice was quiet, and Enjolras could barely hear it, in spite of their closeness.

“I… Grantaire, what on earth are you sorry for?”

Grantaire shifted slightly, and Enjolras had to stop himself from shuddering at the loss of touch, but it seemed only that Grantaire wanted to be able to look him in the eyes.

Grantaire’s eyes were a livid green, full of specks of gold, and Enjolras wanted to drown in them.

“It’s my fault you’re involved in this. If it wasn’t for me, you’d be safe and at home and alive. I don’t… It’s so selfish of me.”

“Selfish?” Enjolras twisted himself more, facing Grantaire head on. They were so close, breathing each-other’s air. Without thinking, Enjolras reached over and grabbed Grantaire’s other hand, holding both of them between them, rubbing his thumb over Grantaire’s knuckles. “Grantaire, what are you talking about?”

“I lied to you. I wasn’t part of Les Amis de L’ABC before I met you. I joined so I would have an excuse to talk to you again. Because you wanted to know more, and you’re so, you’re so, I couldn’t stay away. And now we’re here, and you know I don’t believe we can win this, and we’re all going to die, and you’re going to die, and it’s all my fault, Enjolras, I…”

Grantaire’s breathing was becoming shorter, more panicked, and all Enjolras knew was that he had to stop him.  
He leaned forwards, and their lips met.

It was… it was everything. Everything and nothing. Like the most miraculous thing that had ever happened. Like the most normal thing in the world.

It was over too soon, when Grantaire pulled away, his eyes full of heartbreak and confusion. With the emotions that flooded Enjolras at the same time, he imagined his expression was similar.

“Stop, Enjolras, you don’t know, you can’t mean…”

“I know exactly what I mean, Grantaire.” And that was a lie, because he had no idea what was happening. But it was somehow also the truth, because it was perhaps the most right thing that had ever happened.

“But, but, Enjolras, it’s… me. It’s just me. I know you wanted to talk to me so you could find out about the student groups, you don’t have to pretend for my sake-”

“I’m not pretending, R. I, yes, I wanted you to tell me about Les Amis, but we sat for hours and we talked about everything. You told me about the Louvre, and all the things you had seen in there. I hadn’t, I hadn’t known how lonely I was, Grantaire, but you came and you talked to me and you made me feel like I was out there and living for the first time in a long, long time. Grantaire.” He leant forward, brushing their foreheads against eachother. This time, Grantaire didn’t pull away. “Grantaire, you mean so much to me.”

Grantaire reached up a hand to cradle the side of Enjolras’ face, and Enjolras couldn’t help but lean into the warmth and the pressure.

They stayed pressed together until the next cry went up.

The cry was not one they expected. It was not “Incoming!” or “Cannons!” or a remark on their own lack of ammunition. No. It was Cosette’s high-pitched voice shouting “Gavroche!”

“Gavroche, what are you doing, get back here!” A cacophony of voices shouted on top of each-other, as everyone rushed towards the barricade. Even Grantaire jumped up at the noise, rushing towards the growing crowd. Enjolras blinked. Who was – oh, the gamin from earlier. Cosette had sent him away, though. What was he doing that had everyone shouting at him?

He quickly pushed himself up and made his own way over to the barricade. He might not know Gavroche, but he was just a boy, and he must be doing something to make Cosette’s voice reach such a panic.

Everyone was pressed up against the barricade, peering over the top or through small gaps. Cosette herself was leaning over the top, arms outstretched, still calling out Gavroche’s name. What was the boy doing?

He found himself a gap to peer through, and his breath caught in his throat. For there was Gavroche, darting between the bodies of fallen soldiers, rummaging through their pockets. He had looked small when Enjolras had first seen him, and he looked even smaller now, in the stretch of no man’s land between the barricade and the soldiers.

The sound of a gunshot came from across the empty street. The barricade fell silent, fear almost tangible, for this boy, this child, who was so close to getting shot.

But the bullet missed, and the boy kept singing.

Everyone was screaming now, calling for them to get back, Cosette’s voice above all of them. There was such a contrast with how she had been when Enjolras had first met her. The resolution in her voice had been swapped with a sort of terror.

Enjolras found himself moving before he knew what was happening. The gap he was staring through was apparently small enough for him to squeeze through, because he was suddenly dodging between bullets and tugging at Gavroche’ arm. He had to, he had to get this child out of here, this boy who had nothing and was risking everything.

But Gavroche wouldn’t come. He wrenched his arm out of Enjolras’ grip and made to move to the next corpse. Enjolras could hear people shouting his name, Gavroche’s name, Cosette’s voice full of panic and Grantaire, Grantaire, shouting, but it was all as if from a distance.

He reached out towards Gavroche again. There was a gunshot. And then Gavroche fell back into his arms.

Enjolras froze. He couldn’t think. All he could do was stare. There was a boy in his arms. A body. A corpse. A child. Someone who shouldn’t be here, who shouldn’t even be involved. And now he was dead.

The body of Gavroche took a juddering breath.

Enjolras ran.

He was back on the other side of the barricade, on the safer side of the barricade, before his body remembered to breathe. Gavroche was pulled out of his arms, and then Grantaire was there in front of him, his eyes gleaming, his hands darting about, touching Enjolras as if to affirm himself that he was still alive, that he was still breathing.

“Of all the stupid, reckless, brave things you could have done…” Grantaire’s voice shuddered, and then the man’s arms were wrapped around Enjolras’ shoulders, pulling him tight and close. Enjolras felt a damp patch growing at his neck where Grantaire’s face was buried. He just held him tighter.

He could barely stop the tears from his own eyes, but he did his best to watch what was happening with Gavroche. One of the men was bandaging up his shoulder, as Cosette and another man held the boy steady. He was still unconscious. But he was still breathing. For now.

They seemed to be speaking together, conferring their plans over the boy’s prone form.

When it was done, Cosette stood up. She looked over at an older man, and then turned and stared straight at Enjolras, where he was still clutching Grantaire tight. Her eyes, so fierce and determined when he had first met her, were now full with something else.

Enjolras glanced around. Everyone was staring at Cosette, waiting to see what she would say. She was the leader here, after all.

“This is. This is a lost cause.” She took a deep breath. “And as much as I want to see this through, we. We can do more if we live.”


	7. Javert Derailed

Javert: born in prison, a man bearing an indescribable foundation of rigidity and probity, complicated by an inexpressible hatred for the criminals of the gutter in which he had been born. His was a respect for authority and a hatred of rebellion taken to almost-violent extremes — the servant of the Law could make no mistake; the criminal and downtrodden were irremediably lost and incapable of redemption.

He had never once questioned the absolute construction of his world and his world-view. In Montreuil, he had sought to work with Madeleine before that mayor’s falseness was revealed to the world, but after the debacle over the prostitute, Fantine, he was satisfied that the natural order of things had been restored. 

When Jean Valjean had disappeared into the sea, Javert had always suspected the convict might have escaped. He followed the likely trail to Paris and applied himself diligently to tracking that fugitive from justice. Valjean had, however, eluded him, until now. 

And now — tied to the table in the tap-room of the wine shop behind the lines of the barricades, captured by these young insurgents, speaking with Valjean again for the first time in almost ten years — Javert was conscious of a certain disquiet in his breast.

Bound as he was, he was hot, exhausted, nearing the end of his strength; certainly, he was not unconcerned for his life, as it did appear the revolutionaries’ cause was a futile one, and that they would shoot him where he stood. He was, of course, as much prepared to die as the misguided young fools who had captured him: after all, he had sworn an oath to safeguard society from those who would destroy it. It was, after all, expected that he would one day give his life for his duty, as did any police spy and soldier in the heart of the revolution. 

What he did not expect was to find Jean Valjean at the barricades — the fugitive he had been pursuing for so many years without success, finally walking into the tap-room, hale and hearty and looking for all the world as if he had not aged a single day since they had confronted each other at Fantine’s bedside. And though he, Javert, was now helpless and at Valjean’s mercy, this irremediable criminal had not sought to take his revenge as he had expected; instead, he had promised to surrender to Javert’s custody, and to save his life.

It had to be a trick, of course. Javert knew incontrovertibly that bagnards like Jean Valjean could never alter their fundamental characters, and exchange evil for good. But there was something in the man’s eyes that Javert remembered from his days in Montreuil: that quiet air of authority, that essential decency which had fooled so many for so long and had almost taken in Javert himself. Valjean’s words held the ring of truth to them, and Javert could not understand why that was so.

Through the walls of the tap-room, Javert was able to discern the muffled sounds of cannon-fire and warfare raging outside, together with intermittent intervals between the sounds of the battle. In due course, there arrived a rather lengthier lull in the fighting, and Javert was not surprised when Valjean took the opportunity to stride into the room, a gun in his belt and a knife in his hand.

“I see you have decided not to waste a bullet on me. That seems wise.”

Valjean approached the table and bent over Javert, frowning. A lock of white hair hung across his brow; the last thing Javert believed he would see. The knife flashed down — but rather than carving across his throat, instead it sliced across the ropes that bound him, severing them.

Javert sat up, dizzy and parched and astonished. Valjean put out a hand and assisted him from the table and held him until he could stand upright again. 

So unexpectedly set at liberty, the words poured forth from Javert as water released from a blockading dam. “You _should_ kill me. If not for your own sake, for your girl’s — I realise who she is, the prostitute’s daughter, whom you took from Montfermeil. I won’t rest until I hunt both of you down. You will never be free of me.”

Valjean said, patiently, “I told you, I will not kill you. You are free. I won’t bargain for my life, or hers. I have had done with hiding from the Law. Here is my address: call on me when this is over, and I will come quietly.” 

Despite his best efforts, the room did not seem to right itself. Javert had to lean against Valjean’s arm to steady himself. It felt as if an abyss had opened under his feet, and that he was no longer able to keep his footing, as if the whole of civilisation itself was crumbling around him.

Together, they left the tap-room, and then walked out of the wine-shop into the sunlight. Javert squinted against the sky. 

The square before the barricade was eerily silent. Limp bodies lay covered with cloth, the air acrid with gun-smoke. Against this hubbub rose the wooden spine of the barricade — battered and pummelled by grape-shot and rifle-fire, but still standing, for now.

Valjean said: “Over the top of the barricade, Inspector, I think is the best way. Carrying a white flag before you, so the soldiers won’t shoot.” 

Javert looked into the broad face that had never been far from his thoughts since Montreuil. He had always thought it the personification of the unbreakable criminal spirit. Now the events of this day, which had brought Valjean back into his life once again after so many years, had shown that one tenet of his life was false: that a criminal could also show mercy. Could the other tenets be also similarly fallible — the Law, Authority, society itself? It was unthinkable.

Unsteadily, feeling the widening gulf within that threatened to swallow him whole, he grasped for the one solid thing within his reach. 

“If you are genuine, come with me,” he said to Valjean. “They will not shoot you if you are with me. I will see you safely into custody.”

Valjean paused, and an almost-smile crossed his face. “Thank you for your consideration. But no; I must see to it that the others get away safely.”

They both spared a moment to look across the square. There were multiple points of exit for desperate, fleeing insurgents: the low barrier which shut off the Rue de la Petite Truanderie, the little entrenchment in the Mondetour lane. In the far corner beneath a disordered mass of paving-stones which partly concealed it, an iron grating, placed flat and on a level with the soil and about two feet square. The frame of paving-stones which supported it had been torn up, and it was unfastened.

“Where does that lead to?” Javert asked, and when Valjean did not respond, he asked, “Why did you not just leave me in the tap-room? It would give you all more of an opportunity to escape!”

Valjean shook his head. “The soldiers have left to obtain reinforcements, and better artillery; they will likely take the wine-shop by force. I would not have you as murdered by omission while refusing to kill you myself.” So saying, he pulled out a white handkerchief, and handed it to him.

Was there no end to the man’s consideration? Javert turned away and set himself to climb the barricade, but in truth he felt as if he was falling. 

Nearing the top of the barricade, he glanced behind him to see if Valjean had made his own escape. Valjean had not done so; he was still standing in the same position, watching him, but making no move to draw his pistol to shoot, or to flee. Perhaps he knew, even then, that Javert was no longer a threat to him.

Resolutely, Javert turned away a final time. With his white flag of surrender high above his head, he began to climb down to the troops below.


	8. The Effects of Dreams mixed with Happiness

For some days, Marius lay in a fever accompanied by delirium, brought about by what Joly had initially believed were minor wounds on the head, and a fractured collar-bone, which he had sustained in a fall in the sewers in the midst of their terrible escape. Gavroche, whose own wounds had initially seemed so inevitably fatal, seemed by comparison to be faring better over the same period of time, which was perhaps testament to the resilience of the still very young.

Throughout this time of convalescence at No. 44, Cosette never left Marius’ side. Assisted by Toussaint and the doctor Valjean had summoned, she cut lint bandages and brewed broths and administered sponge baths with the stoicism of a battlefield physician.

“We should add to our list of causes the right of women to be admitted to medical schools,” Joly noted, as an aside and in no part in jest, for Musichetta had proved even more efficacious in her nursing of Bossuet and the others wounded on the barricades.

Then came the moment when Marius’ doctor pronounced him as good as dead. Cosette, seized by a fit of terrible remorse, sent for Marius’ estranged grandfather, so that the young man would not pass on to the next life without the old one seeing him a final time.

It was thus through this sublime act of gallantry that Luc-Esprit Gillenormand, proud royalist and stubborn old goat, was conveyed from his estate in the Marais to his grand-son’s bedside in the unfashionable quarter of Rue Plumet. When the old man set eyes upon the poor figure with bandages about his head, the old man wrung his hands and burst into despairing laughter.

“He is dead, isn’t he, Mademoiselle? He is dead! He has got himself killed on the barricades! He did it to spite me! He knew that I was waiting for him to come home, and that I had had his room arranged, and now he shall never do it. Ah! heartless lad! Ah! I am going to die too, that I am!”

All were greatly startled. “Come, monsieur, do not carry on so,” Combeferre stammered, and the doctor rather wondered if he was indeed to be faced with two patients rather than one. The old man threw himself to his infirm knees before Marius’ sickbed, and Cosette was compelled to intervene to stop Gillenormand from flinging himself across Marius’ inert body and doing even further damage.

“Monsieur, he is not dead, and neither are you,” she said, firmly, holding fast to his withered shoulders. “Please calm yourself, this does not help either of you.”

Gillenormand peered into her flower-like face, seeing her whole for the first time. Cosette’s eyes were red from crying, of course, and her hair was in an uproar, but it seemed this desiccated old rake had not seen anything as pure and beautiful in decades.

“Why, Mademoiselle, you are like a little angel. Pray, why did my boy not take you dancing at the Chaumerie, as is the duty of young folks to do, and instead go off to fight and get himself shot down like a brute? And not for any lady, for what? For the dead General Lamarque, and the Republic?”

Cosette turned bright red: less by dint of the thoughtless compliments the old womaniser had bestowed, and more from the regret of having exhorted Marius onto those very barricades herself.

At that moment, Marius slowly opened his eyes, and his glance, still dimmed by lethargic wonder, rested on M. Gillenormand.

“Marius!” cried the old man. “Marius! My little Marius! my child! my well-beloved son! You open your eyes, you gaze upon me, you are alive! I believe in God again, and in all the angels, and in General Lamarque himself! Long live the Republic!”

It took no small effort to bundle the old man back into his carriage, with promises to bring him back the following day, and for Combeferre and Courfeyrac to clear the room. Cosette turned back to Marius and wetted his bandages with her tears of relief, but he had fallen asleep again.

The fever had broken, though, and the next morning Marius Pontmercy was himself once again. He perceived that he was in a strange place, and a bed that was adorned with pretty white lace and ribbons, which he understood must be Cosette’s own. He saw the light streaming through the window from the quiet garden outside, and then at the tear-stained face of the girl beside him, and he felt profoundly glad to be alive.

“Did you really have my grandfather brought here, or did I dream it?”

“I did.” Cosette hung her head. “I thought you were dying, and I could not bear that I prevented the closest thing you have to a father from saying goodbye.”

Marius ventured, “Now do you see why I am estranged from him?”

“I do.” Cosette suppressed a shudder. “But, even so, I would suppose you would wish him to attend our wedding, wouldn’t you?”

Marius took a moment to comprehend what Cosette was saying, and astonished delight burst across his soul like the sun over a benighted land.

“Cosette! Dearest! Does this mean your father would really agree if I were to ask him for your hand in marriage?”

“I believe he would,” Cosette said, slowly, as Marius took up her white hand in his uninjured one and covered it with kisses. “I was afraid he would be disappointed with me, and not agree to my marrying anyone, but I rather think he has forgiven me, in the same way as he has forgiven those who hardly deserve his mercy.”

She flushed again as she said it. She did not think she could herself forgive the policeman who had driven her mother to her death, nor that her father could so easily absolve the lack of mercy that had hounded their days. But it seemed Javert might be truly remorseful for his previous actions. He had refused to arrest Valjean, which was a start; Valjean had confided that the inspector had sought to resign from his post, and also his life, and that Valjean had with some difficulty prevented him. She hoped the inspector was in fact genuine, for she misliked the idea that Valjean could be misled into pity, or worse, into friendship.

In any case, Javert had not denounced her or her friends to his colleagues, even though the Prefect of Police had put it about that it was the civic duty of the city’s doctors to inform on all patients suspected of being revolutionaries. Even now, she understood that the authorities had made dozens of arrests of those others who had not quitted their barricades so fortuitously. Charles Jeanne, the leader of the barricades at the Cloître Saint-Merry, had managed to escape, but his fellows had not been so fortunate.

The defendants would need money for lawyers. Cosette had already told Jean Vigouroux’s counsel, Maitre Alexandre Marie, that she would do what she could to assist.

It was God’s Providence that Cosette and her friends had managed to flee the Chanvrerie without suffering the same fate, or worse. God, that was, as well as the good man she called her father. If she and Courfeyrac and Combeferre had not come to their senses early enough to make good their escape, perhaps all of them would be dead, as so many brave citizens were even now. The thought of it brought fresh tears to her eyes.

Marius pressed her hand tenderly. “What is wrong, my angel?”

Cosette wished bitterly that she was in fact the angel he described. But in truth, she was very far from that. Perhaps other boys would have been disappointed; it was no small wonder that Marius was not, not even after she had foolishly endangered his life on the barricades.

“I am so sorry. I did not realise what a terrible mistake it all was. That I was throwing everyone else’s lives away on such an ill-conceived plan. And it was one thing for us to sacrifice ourselves, but another for poor Gavroche, who has never known a day’s worth of happiness in his whole life!”

Cosette clenched her fists together, but permitted Marius to wipe her tears away with his sleeve. Then she said, fiercely, “Unrest alone will not achieve for us our goals. What we must do, at our next opportunity, is to co-ordinate our civil action with the liberal press, and also cultivate certain likely politicians. Casimir Perier has left us, but his replacement is no better. Mlle. Corneille says she might know some of the younger liberal deputies who might be sympathetic to our cause.”

Marius made a supportive noise, and she turned to him, looking long and lovingly into his wan face.

“But first, I want to be married to you. There are things in our society that are worth living for after all, and worth saving.”

Marius, stunned and overwhelmed with the dazzling shock of happiness, gazed into her blue eyes, and murmured, “There are, indeed, for I have loved you from the first moment I saw you in the Café Musain, and every moment since. I would have been willing to die at your side with joy in my heart, but it is with even more joy that I live for you. It seems your father and you are willing for you to marry me, and that even my grandfather will agree. As such, if you will have me, let us work together to make a better world for our fathers and grandfathers, and for ourselves.”

Cosette smiled, and leaned in to kiss him on the mouth, for the first time in their lives. 

Her mind was, however, racing ahead, to plans and politicians and a different way of arranging for protests. They were battle-hardened, now, and so much wiser. There was so much to do, and so little time to do it in, but she had no doubt that, with her friends’ help, with Marius’, with her father’s, in the end their Revolution would succeed.

Grantaire found himself once again favouring the Luxembourg Gardens. It was late summer, now, and the trees were full of green and bounteous leaves, and the paths were full of smiling faces and happy young couples. And yet, he could not bring himself to enjoy it.

He had not seen Enjolras in months. Not since the barricade.

Grantaire could still feel it, sometimes. The heart-wrenching fear when he saw Enjolras run into the street, risking his life to save that of a boy he scarcely knew. He had held Enjolras so tightly afterwards, he had never wanted to let him go.

Throughout their flight from the barricade, he had not let him go. Had not been able to. But then, they had reached Enjolras’ home, and his mother had come out, screaming at the blood soaking her son’s jacket.

She had dragged Enjolras inside, and Grantaire had not seen him since.

He had been to the alley behind the garden, every day for weeks, but he had never appeared. Eventually, he had forced himself to give up. He couldn’t keep doing it to himself, waiting and hoping.

But he still found himself in the gardens, more often than he perhaps should have. And he still sat, under a tree at the edge of the path, with a book perched on his lap. Not that he could always concentrate enough to read it, mind, but the effort was there, at least.

On this particular day, the sun was shining down, and Grantaire was more basking in its golden warmth than reading. 

As such, he was particularly put out when a dark shadow fell across him. He looked up, a harsh curse on the tip of his tongue, but it melted away at the sight of Enjolras, his golden hair glowing but his wide smile shining even brighter.

Grantaire threw himself off the floor and into his friend’s arms. His embrace was readily returned.

“I have finally brought Maman to an agreement that I should not have to stay indoors at all times.” Enjolras spoke quietly, the air brushing Grantaire’s ear. “She thinks that if I have a little more freedom, I shall refrain from being quite so reckless in the future.”

Grantaire pulled away slightly, but only to look into Enjolras’ blue eyes, full of light and life and – dare he say it – love. “You must not leave me again,” he murmured.

“Never.”


	9. Barricade Art

Gorgeous barricade [art](https://iberiandoctor.dreamwidth.org/42027.html) from @ssara-b on tumblr!

**Author's Note:**

> So many thanks to our betas Nemainofthewater and Miss M <3
> 
> Some helpful links:  
> [Women in the French Revolution](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_the_French_Revolution)  
> [de Gouges' Declaration of the Rights of Woman and of the Female Citizen](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Declaration_of_the_Rights_of_Woman_and_of_the_Female_Citizen)  
> [Saint Merry trial records](https://chanvrerie.net/history/saint-merry/premiere-audience/)


End file.
